Search Study Shows Google and Ask Leading the Way

Ask seem to be advertising agressivly in the UK market at the moment, they've had TV ads running in the past month, and there were also ads promoting ask.com as a way to get financal information in the Sunday Times Business Supplement at the weekend (or was it the business section of the Evening Standard yesterday? can't remember), which could be a contributing factor to their growth at the moment. It is important to recognise that advertising will only produce a short term gain if they do not work on user retention or bury it in peoples minds to repeatedly visit Ask.

I hope we will see a lot more from Ask.com in future, they are not pissing around with any of this portalisation bollocks (as yet). When you become a portal, you stop people seeing you as a search engine, instead you become a content provider with a search function.

The verb associated with the ask.com homepage at the moment is "to search", the same as Google. MSN & Yahoo loose the clarity and power of the "to search" message because it is diluted by the other overwhelming actions on their homepages.

Those Ask TV spots in the US a weird human/monkeys throwing keyboards around the room.

This from Reuters:

Google gains search share, widens lead on Yahoo

Quite a credit to Google. I've always been a fan of Ask too, especially now that they stopped displaying 10 ads before an organic result. I see their banner ads all over too.

Ask has always treated me well in their search engine but the referrals have always been at the bottom of the barrel, below many websites that have my links.

When I see Ask moving up the ranks nipping on MSN or Yahoo for referrals I'll know they're gaining ground. So far this week they are below AOL and slightly above AltaVista in referrals.

While I have rank in Ask it is at the bottom for my search traffic of the big players. Those monkey-people are great at frightening small children though.

But I wish them luck, its always good to have some competition with the SEs.

Hmm the jeeves. I get more referals from a czech SE than ask. I would put more hope in msn or yahoo readressing the balance than that tiddler.

I can understand Andy having a kind interest in Ask, they having sponsored his old blog over at kwr/ws. (see top placement)

BUT, I find it curious that Bear Stearns analysts seem to pop up now and again as Ask's over-zealous cheerleaders and/or press corp. The eyeball count sent to my site by Ask is, well, pitiful.

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." (usually attributed to Mark Twain or Benjamin Disraeli)

Documentation here

Yes, Bear Stearns smells. They have been sailing close to the wind for sometime, and 2 weeks ago were fined the tidy sum of $250 million for wrongdoings. Personally I would be wary of PR info put out by the same.

Bear Sterns fined $250 million

not sure if it makes a difference, but the data is from comscore -- the report based on the data is bear stearns.

I find Ask gain in market-share appallingly low given their small base and that they have already put Ask on Ticketmaster and some of their other well branded sites.

It's not the data that bothers me, km, it's the feeling of spin that piques my cynical side. I've not seen the full report but the inclusion of Ask as a (seemingly) viable percentage without disclosing that it is still a lower-rung provider of search traffic seems misleading. The fact that it's a much-used marketing ploy to talk about percentage gains in marketshare from an undisclosed-but-near-rock-bottom position doesn't help, either.

Perhaps Battelle's 4 paragraph excerpt makes it seem that way because it's out of context, but I don't believe this is the first time their analysts have been overly kind to Ask.

in all of the BS reports (my bold):

"Bear Stearns does and seeks to do business with companies covered in its research reports. As a result investors should be aware that the firm may have a conflict of interest that could affect the objectivity of this report"

edit: Nevermind, had a filter on.

Ask results are a joke in my sector, Au travel - hardly any traffic comes from them at all. Def. no growth here...

overly kind to Ask.

Seems a few people frequenting the SEO boards do the same, highlighting percentages often, etc.

ASK fails at marketing 101, telling people they are akin to monkeys because they use a less than stellar search product is still telling them THEY ARE MONKEYS. Bad, stupid monkeys in marketing.

Chevy rolls out "Ford drivers are monkeys!"

Ford drivers tell Chevy to go eat banana.

stooopid stuff. ooh ooh eeh eeh

Ask took a pretty good beating over at SEW

If you're a fan of marketspeak horseshit, don't miss their rep's last post.

"proactive manner to provide clarity and guidance around traffic quality issues."
"Determine what data is meaningful"
"how that data can be most efficiently and effectively communicated to the SE's"

Hell, my eyes glaze over just posting snippets here.